Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Sunsets Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Sunsets poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sunsets poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sunsets poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

See also:

by Baudelaire, Charles
...LONG since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, 
By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, 
Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, 
Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. 

The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies 
Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, 
Solemn and mystic, with the colours which 
The setting sun reflected in my eyes. 

And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, 
In splendours of blue sky...Read more of this...



by Tate, James
...lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations, 
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets, 
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't 
forget the good deeds, the charity work, 
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations, 
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets, 
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't 
forget the good deeds, the charity work, 
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...in now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...tering
Death to a human eye: for there did spring
From natural west, and east, and south, and north,
A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth
A gold-green zenith 'bove the Sea-God's head.
Of lucid depth the floor, and far outspread
As breezeless lake, on which the slim canoe
Of feather'd Indian darts about, as through
The delicatest air: air verily,
But for the portraiture of clouds and sky:
This palace floor breath-air,--but for the amaze
Of deep-seen wonders motionless...Read more of this...



by Borges, Jorge Luis
...ct, I'll take fewer things seriously,
I'll be less hygenic,
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places - I've never been,
I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary
 ones,
I was one of those people who live
 prudent and prolific lives -
 each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,
 if I could go back ...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...ria is going to the war.) 
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees, 
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas. 
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease, 
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees; 
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring 
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. 
Giants and the Genii, 
Multiplex of wing and eye, 
Whose strong obedience broke the sky 
When...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...nd smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
“I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gul...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings fore...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ld enter: 'twas Saul as before.
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean---a sun's slow decline
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine
Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, arm folded arm
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

XI.

What spell or what charm,
(For, awhile there was trouble within...Read more of this...

by Stojanovic, Dejan
...mple. 

To not say all that can be said 
Is the secret of discipline and economy. 

To leave out beautiful sunsets 
Is the secret of good taste. 

To hide feelings when you are near crying 
Is the secret of dignity. 

To cut and tighten sentences 
Is the secret of mastery. 

To keep the air fresh among words 
Is the secret of verbal cleanliness. 

To write good poems 
Is the secret of brevity. 

To go against the grain 
Is the ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hom have you slaughter’d lately, European headsman? 
Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?)

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs; 
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts, 
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown’d ladies, impeach’d ministers, rejected kings, 
Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest. 

I see those who in any land have died for the good cause;
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out; 
(Mind you, O for...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...
Like Israelites with staff in hand, 
The people waited restlessly: 
They looked towards the mountains old 
And saw the sunsets come and go 
With gorgeous golden afterglow, 
That made the West a fairyland, 
And marvelled what that West might be 
Of which such wondrous tales were told. 

For tales were told of inland seas 
Like sullen oceans, salt and dead, 
And sandy deserts, white and wan, 
Where never trod the foot of man, 
Nor bird went winging overhead, 
Nor ever stir...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
..., 
Claim and acclaim on all thy thousand thrones 
Hewn out of multi-colored rocks and risen 
Stained with the stored-up sunsets in all tones- 
If in all tones and shades this shade I feel, 
Come from the black cathedrals of Castille 
Climbing these flat black stones of Catalonia, 
To thy most merciful face of night I kneel....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...nothing else to gaze on,
 Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
 Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
 Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
 Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ost desolate year
In its last month learn with our love to glow,
Men yet should rank its cloudless atmosphere
Above the sunsets of five years ago:
Of my great praise too part should be its own,
Now reckon'd peerless for thy love alone 

68
Away now, lovely Muse, roam and be free:
Our commerce ends for aye, thy task is done:
Tho' to win thee I left all else unwon,
Thou, whom I most have won, art not for me.
My first desire, thou too forgone must be,
Thou too, O much lament...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...br>
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along
the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And ...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...r>
They knew every time I fooled them who was fooled and how.

 Best of all
I have loved the red gold smoke of your sunsets;
I have loved a moon with a ring around it
Floating over your public square;
I have loved the white dawn frost of early winter silver
And purple over your railroad tracks and lumber yards.

 The wishing heart of you I loved, Kalamazoo.
 I sang bye-lo, bye-lo to your dreams.
I sang bye-lo to your hopes and songs.
I wished to God there ...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...er that expansive reason 
Whose omen't is, and sign. 
Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show? 
Verdict which accumulates 
From lengthening scroll of human fates, 
Voice of earth to earth returned, 
Prayers of saints that inly burned,-- 
Saying, What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent; 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; 
Heart's love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker fetch thine eye 
Up to his style, and manners of t...Read more of this...

by Hillringhouse, Mark
...part rainforest, and closed my eyes
I was in som tropical country:
that feathered blue against the orange of forgotten sunsets
after the rain-washed streets erased the footprints
of tired mothers who waited in line
under the red and gold transom
to cash their welfare checks.

And maybe we're all feeling the same rage,
seeing the up-turned fish tanks stacked against the parakeet cages,
sunlight catching on the twisted wire between the shabbiness
of an emptied storefront, ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Sunsets poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs